When it's wrong
The output missed, or the run failed, and the user needs a path back that costs less than starting over.
Regeneration is the cheapest fix and the least controllable one. The useful ladder runs from steering, to editing, to branching, to taking over, to handing it to a person — and the product has to make each rung visible at the moment it is needed.
13 patterns for this moment
Each one is a different way to resolve the tradeoff above.
Re-run scoped to a correction — shorter, more formal, drop the third point — instead of a blind retry.
A diff of the agent's proposal the user can amend before accepting, rather than accept-or-discard.
Iteration that forks rather than overwrites, so earlier good states stay reachable.
Several candidate outputs shown side by side so choosing replaces re-prompting.
Post-generation filters that narrow a set of candidates rather than regenerating it.
Thumbs plus a short structured reason, so the signal is diagnosable rather than a bare score.
A clear route for harmful or high-stakes failures that reaches a human with the full context.
A background failure becomes a visible, actionable state rather than an absence of output.
A clear transition from agent to person, with the switch of actor made obvious.
A human takes the controls without cancelling the run, then hands back.
A compact briefing — what was tried, what is known, what the ask is — handed to the receiving human.
Agent output waiting on people, with assignment, priority and age visible to the team.
After human work, the agent resumes with the correction folded in and says what it now knows.
Audit checklist for this moment
Walk one flow through these questions. Ticks are saved in this browser.